Best Practices For Your Growing Startups

Is your growing startup company heading down the right path to success? Make sure you follow these steps as your company grows.

So you’ve got an idea and a plan to make it profitable…but now what? Depending on your desired business structure, the requirements for starting your business will vary.

When you start a business, you don’t expect it to remain stagnant. You want it to grow. But how do you do that?

Many entrepreneurs dream of owning their own business but feel overwhelmed by the thought of navigating small business startup.

Starting your own business will transform your life and potentially give you financial freedom and the ability to do what you want with your time.

However, there are necessary steps that every entrepreneur, regardless of business structure, should consider when growing startups.

State Your Expectations

To start developing your business or growing startups, you must first state your expectations. What are your expectations for your business, your employees, and yourself?

This will lay the foundation for how your business is going to run. Without expectations, there are no benchmarks to work up to and your business will fall apart.

Once you make clear your expectations, you need to set goals for your business. Goals will help you to plot your course for the future.

If your business doesn’t know where it wants to go, it won’t put any meaningful effort into a positive and singular direction.

Your goals need to be concrete and possible to obtain.

Writing a business plan is the very first step, as it helps you outline your goals, identify your competition, create your mission, and plan for a successful launch and future.

When you’re ready to write your business plan, you can simply perform an online search for a great template and fill in the blanks.

If you need more help, you can hire a business plan writer (they can easily be found through an online search, too). This document will drive your next steps.

Legalise Your Business

First and foremost, you want to ensure your business is legal before you begin operations.

Licensing and registration requirements for businesses vary by state and industry. Most states require small businesses to at least register their name with a state agency.

You need to be aware of all the legal requirements of growing startups.

Legal requirements depend on what kind of business you’re opening, and the best resource to ensure you’re meeting all of them is your local Secretary of State.

This position is found at the state level and can tell you everything you need to know about registering your business name (often called your DBA – “doing business as” name) and obtain necessary licenses, permits, and insurance coverage.

There are also a few federal requirements, such as registering as an employer so you can pay employment taxes.

This guide from the US Small Business Association provides detailed information on the process.

Next, make sure your business will not unfairly mimic the name and services of another company.

Operating a business that is substantially similar in name to a competitor is likely to result in a cease and desist letter and lawyer fees.

Many wise entrepreneurs consult with small business lawyers to ensure their startup complies with the law.

Find Good Employees

The easiest way to find the best employees is to pay the best salary. However, a small business in the startup phase cannot dish out too much cash on employee salaries.

Startups who want to attract and keep the best talent must find creative ways to compensate their employees. There are many ways to entice talent to join your team other than cash.

Some creative, non-cash perks include offering work-from-home days or flexible working hours.

A popular method for startups is to pay employees a smaller base salary but offer shares of stock for each quarter the employee stays with the company or meets certain milestones.

If an employee has a financial stake in the company’s performance, they are more motivated to help the business excel.

Of course, this method is only available to those small business owners who are comfortable with a shared-ownership structure.

Every small business startup will need to consider the target audience of employees and cater to their desires in the workplace to win over their hard work and talent from a more established, competitor company.

Also, the world is moving at a fast pace and things are always changing. New changes require new training.

You must understand that your business will always need to receive new training and you need to invest in training your employees.

Any new training that your people need should be given to them. If you can’t give them that training yourself, find someone who can.

Manage Your Bookkeeping

Many small business owners are not finance graduates and worry about managing the financial aspects of the business like bookkeeping and tax filing.

For this reason, accounting is often outsourced to an accounting firm who specializes in bookkeeping and tax filing for growing startups.

Because these third-party vendors provide services to many small businesses, they’re often able to do so at a very affordable rate, providing confidence and a high return on investment for small business owners.

Bookkeeping is necessary, especially if you are trying to grow your business.

You need to know how well your business is doing. If you don’t follow up on your paperwork, you are going to have no idea if your business is succeeding, failing, or just getting by.

It can also help you decide what works and what does not. By keeping up with your paperwork, you can realize what you are doing right and what does not work.

You can see what is selling better than others. You might notice certain services that you offer are making you more money than others and decide to focus on those.

Bookkeeping also helps you see where you are spending money.

You may be wasting your money on certain things, without even realizing it. By monitoring your spending, you may find ways to cut back, increasing your profits.

Choose Partners Carefully

One of the most important things you can do is to network with other like-minded entrepreneurs.

Having the right connections will come in handy in so many ways. Attend networking events and connect with others via online methods.

In the beginning, your network will be small and you won’t know that many people who you can partner with. However, don’t settle for less than what you deserve.

Make sure to choose a partner who is reliable, shares the same values and goals as you, and has a good work ethic. Be careful about partnering with family and friends.

Besides the very real possibility of a business conflict ruining your friendship or your relationship with your relative, it’s often hard to make the right business decisions when you’re partnered with a close friend or family member and you do not see eye to eye.

Build An Impactful Image

It is very important to develop your business image for growing startups.

This means that you need a good logo, good graphic design, and good marketing. You probably won’t be able to do this by yourself.

If you can do it, then do so. If you can’t, then you may have to outsource this function. Whatever you do, make sure you create a good business image.

Go With the Market Flow

You have to move in the way that the market is moving. How exactly do you go about doing this?

First of all, you need to keep track of what’s working and what isn’t, within your company. Usually, this is something that will be self-evident.

Maybe one product or service is working better than another. The obvious solution is to push the product or service that is working even more.

Try to emphasize it in your marketing efforts.

Set up special offers that include that product somehow. Make sure you never run out of that product. This way, you’ll be going with the flow rather than going against it.

Be Innovative and Maximize Your Profits

When you set up a business, your aim might be to introduce a new product to the world. Or maybe you have a great idea for an innovation to an existing product.

Either way, your idea is usually to do something new or to do it in a new way.

You may have some great innovative ideas. Still, at some point, most business owners find that you can’t implement all these ideas if you want to maximize profits.

This doesn’t mean that you have to give up on your innovative ideas altogether. It just means that you have to focus on what’s working for your business and go with that.

Certain innovations work better than others. And once you’ve come across something that works, you need to take full advantage of it.

Growing Startups Made Easy

Want to become an entrepreneur? Starting a business is just the first step.

Starting a small business is easy when you have the right support and the right resources.

You need to develop a mindset where you are not afraid of failure. This way, you’ll be able to take on new projects and ventures without letting your doubts get in your way.

Discussed above are just eight tips you need to consider as you grow your business. For more guidance on creating your startup, contact me.